Christopher Marte celebrates at his watch party held on Delancey Street Tuesday night. Photo courtesy of Caitlin Kelmar
Christopher Marte declared victory Tuesday night, appearing certain to hold on to his Lower Manhattan City Council seat in the 1st District and defeating his three Democratic primary challengers. This was Marte’s third primary victory since first winning in 2021.
With 91% of the votes counted late Tuesday night, Marte held a commanding lead with 11,366 votes and 49.2% of the total vote, double his closest rival, Elizabeth Lewinsohn (5,619 votes) at 24.3 %. Jess Coleman ran third at 16.1% (3,716 votes). Eric Yu (2,300 votes) trailed at nearly 10%.
Marte said he was confident that by time all the votes were counted he would reach the 50% of the vote he needs to win in the ranked choice balloting.
“It’s amazing the amount of votes we’ve gotten,” he told the Trib by phone Tuesday night from his watch party on Delancey Street. “I think it’s the most primary votes in any election that I’ve run for City Council. So it was a really high turnout. And it was just great to feel the support from all throughout the community and all throughout the district.”
Marte was up against three members of Community Board 1 and a slew of attack ads, many in support of Coleman but orchestrated by independent political action committees that painted the councilman as anti-development, largely for his opposition to the City of Yes for Housing Opportunity rezoning package.
“We had a lot of big money attack us during the past few months,” Marte said. “And we succeeded, right? The biggest real estate developers, the biggest hedge fund owners were coming against us and outnumbering us when it came to dollar amounts. But, you know, we had the people power on a local basis that really stood strong.”
Marte had fought several big residential projects including, most controversially, the long-litigated affordable housing project for seniors that would replace the Elizabeth Street Garden in Little Italy. But just a day before the primary, in a rezoning agreement with Marte for other parts of the district where his approval will be key, Mayor Eric Adams reversed himself and announced support for preserving the garden. The arrangement includes more than 600 affordable housing units to be constructed on three other city-owned lots.
“Today,” Marte said,” I think we won a mandate to continue to do the work that we’ve been doing in this community.”